PROVINCIAL THEATER DURING THE REVOLUTION AND THE EMPIREPermanent and Touring Theaters, Career Development, and Repertoire Reception

Recent research on theatrical life in Revolutionary and Napoleonic France has tended to focus on the following themes:

* physical performance conditions (such as buildings’ aesthetics, auditoriums, scenery and costumes, as well as the demographics and behavior of the spectators) * diversity and specificity of different repertoires * generic evolutions during the period in question (the Revolution broke down the regulation of established genres, allowing for the development of new genres such as ‘théâtre carnavalesque’ and melodrama) * interactions between theater in its largest sense, politics, and journalism.

However, the majority of current studies concentrate on Parisian troupes and the conditions of theatrical life in the provinces remain overlooked.

The Therepsciore project is led by a multidisciplinary team made up of Revolutionary and Napoleonic historians based at the CHEC in Clermont-Ferrand and literary specialists of the period’s theater, both in France and abroad, at the CELIS in Clermont-Ferrand and the seventeenth- and eighteenth-century section of the CELLF at Paris-IV. This project aims to combat the current scholarly disregard of Revolutionary and Napoleonic theater in the provinces by creating a database of theaters, troupes, and repertoires between 1791 and 1813.

The data comes from national, departmental, and municipal archives and libraries of towns and regions which possessed a theater, including those of the new and annexed departments in the German Lands and satellite states (known in French as the ‘Sister Republics’). This database allows us to understand better performance conditions (such as the construction and closure of theatres, the composition and touring routes of troupes, the relationship between local authorities and amateur dramatics), as well as the development of individual careers, and the state of repertoires and their reception.

The project has occasioned multiple research events in addition to international and interdisciplinary collaborations.

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